CHAPTER IX.

THE RECONCILIATION.





_FOR_ such a reception the young wife was wholly unprepared.
Suddenly her husband had put on a new character and assumed a right
of control against which her sensitive pride and native love of
freedom arose in strong rebellion. That she had done wrong in going
away she acknowledged to herself, and had acknowledged to him. But
he had met confession in a spirit so different from what was
anticipated, and showed an aspect so cold, stern, and exacting, that
she was bewildered. She did not, however, mistake the meaning of his
language. It was plain that she understood the man's position to be
one of dictation and control: we use the stronger aspect in which it
was presented to her mind. As to submission, it was not in all her
thoughts. Wrung to agony as her heart was, and appalled as she
looked, trembling and shrinking into the future, she did not yield a
moment to weakness.

Midnight found Irene alone in her chamber. She had flung herself
upon a bed when she came up from the parlor, and fallen asleep after
an hour of fruitless beating about in her mind. Awaking from a maze
of troubled dreams, she started up and gazed, half fearfully, around
the dimly-lighted room.

"Where am I?" she asked herself. Some moments elapsed before the